DEBORAH'S TROUBLE
"'Oh, I don't know what he'd do, but I know he'd do something. He's that
kind of a man.'"
When the first days of the spring bass-fishing came, the Doctor coaxed
Dan away for a three days trip to the river, beyond Gordon's Mills, where
the roaring trout-brook enters the larger stream.
It was well on toward noon the morning that Dan and the Doctor left, that
Miss Farwell found Deborah in tears, with Denny trying vainly to comfort
her.
"Come, come, mother, don't be takin' on so. It'll be all right somehow,"
Denny was saying as the nurse paused on the threshold of the little
kitchen, and the crippled lad's voice was broken, though he strove so
bravely to make it strong.
The widow in her low chair, her face buried in her apron, swayed back and
forth in an agony of grief, her strong form shaking with sobs. Denny
looked at the young woman appealingly as--with his one good hand on his
mother's shoulder--he said again, "Come, mother, look up; it's Miss Hope
that's come to see you. Don't, don't mother dear. We'll make it all
right--sure we will though; we've got to!"
Miss Farwell went to Denny's side and together they managed, after a
little, to calm the good woman.
"It's a shame it is for me to be a-goin' on so, Miss Hope, but I--but
I--" She nearly broke down again.
"Won't you tell me the trouble, Mrs. Mulhall?" urged the nurse. "Perhaps
I can help you."
"Indade, dear heart, don't I know you've trouble enough of your own,
without your loadin' up with Denny's an' mine beside? Ain't I seen how
you been put to it the past months to make both ends meet for you an'
Gracie, poor child; an' you all the time fightin' to look cheerful an'
bright, so as to keep her heartened up? Many's the time, Miss Hope, I've
seen the look on your own sweet face, when you thought nobody'd be
noticin', an' every night Denny an' me's prayed the blessed Virgin to
soften the hearts of the people in this danged town.
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